Over the past week I’ve been researching radical new treatments available right now for those people our doctors have run out of ideas for.

Lots of research is going on all over the world to find treatments and cures for conditions that have so far baffled doctors. Conditions including multiple sclerosis, cancer, diabetes and, of course, rheumatoid arthritis.

Permanent solutions to these conditions have so far eluded us, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a clinic somewhere in the world that claims it can cure them.

Luckily, most of their claims are obviously far-fetched, even to someone desperate to believe them, but it’s very hard to keep a level, logical head when someone appears to offer the answer to your prayers.

I consider myself pretty hard-headed and not particularly easily led, but many of these ‘practitioners’ seem absolutely credible, even to me.

I’ll be honest and admit that if I had a spare twenty grand I’d more than likely already be tucked up in a clinic in some far-flung part of the world having scary experimental treatments performed on me!

So having spent the last week weeding out the sublime from the ridiculous, I’ve ended up with only one real contender in the genuine treatment stakes, and that’s stem cell therapy.

I’m not surprised by this. I’m sure I’ve gone on about stem cell research on more than one column-occasion, and progress is moving faster than I could ever have hoped for.

The problem is that the only 100 per cent safe way of receiving stem cell therapy is to get on a Government-approved trial, but most of those desperate enough to try such radical new treatments are way too far gone in the course of their disease to be accepted.

So the only people willing to treat people like that – people like me – are clinics and practitioners more interested in money than research. And that’s a worrying situation.

In my case, research was purely academic, and anyway, I’ve just a few lonely coppers knocking about in the bottom of my piggy-bank, so I’m safe from the clutches of such medical cowboys.

But there are millions like me, only too eager to believe that a way out of their dire prognosis exists, if only they can find it in time. Unlike me though, for many, money is no object . . . and those are the folk I worry about.

So to anyone daring to hope you’ve found the cure we’ve all been searching for, and for a knockdown price to boot, sorry to be the pin in your balloon, but just try and remember that if it sounds too good to be true – I’m afraid it usually is.